The Peacock Room Comes to America: Exhibiting Freer’s Bibles

In November 1912 museum founder Charles Lang Freer put two rare biblical manuscripts on public view in his Detroit home. This special installation showcases those antique works—a parchment codex of Deuteronomy and Joshua, and the so-called Washington Codex, the third oldest parchment manuscript of the Gospels—in the unexpected setting of James McNeill Whistler’s Peacock Room. Part of the long-term exhibition The Peacock Room Comes to America, this presentation exemplifies Freer’s cosmopolitan aesthetic philosophy by juxtaposing biblical parchments with ceramics gathered from all over Asia and framed by Whistler’s brilliant blue and gold decorations.

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